US Certification Initiatives in the Coffee Industry: the Battle for Just Remuneration

Abstract

The value chain of coffee, the world’s second most valuable commodity after oil, differs markedly between the production side and the final consumption side. At the supply end — in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America — we find story after story of human exploitation and repression. When colonial powers first disseminated coffee around the globe, they also sent along slaves and indentured immigrants. People who were not forcibly or illegally removed from the land where coffee was eventually planted remained, often indebted, to cultivate a cash crop in an uncertain market instead of traditional subsistence plants and trees; this cultivation subsequently devastated the eco-systems upon which people depended, through deforestation, depletion and pesticide use. When children have not worked alongside men and women to plant, harvest and process coffee, they have suffered from poor living conditions, hunger and malnutrition, with little hope of gaining an education.

This chapter emerges from the Duke Project on Social and Environmental Certification, generously funded by the Ford Foundation. I wish to thank colleagues Gary Gereffi and Erika Sasser and research assistants Sara Eisenstat, Christopher Galik and Veronica Munoz. I am grateful also to Peter Giuliano, Bill Mace and Steve Moody for sharing their understanding of the fair trade movement and the coffee industry.